[X-Newbies] out of control mess

[Michael Winter]

On Oct 1, 2004, at 2:05 PM, John Park wrote:

> Hi,
> I'm writing for help on organizing my mac.  Is there a web page or 
> book that describes different ways to organize files.  I seem to end 
> up with everything on my desktop, and multiple versions of things and 
> in general a big mess of files.

To start, I'm going to assume you're using Mac OS X. If that is the 
case, Apple has started the process for you in your home folder. There 
will be folders called Documents, Movies, Music  and Pictures among 
others.

I generally add another one I call "Downloads" and set the preferences 
in my web browsers and any other programs that download files to use 
that folder as the default for downloads -saves clutter on the desktop.

 From there, let the files you have dictate the structure. If you have 
files related to finance and/or banking, create a folder called 
"Finance" for them. If you have multiple versions of something and want 
to keep all of them, put them in a single folder with the base name of 
whatever is in there. In general, if you see a group of files with a 
logical connection, make a folder for them. Wether these folders go 
inside your Documents folder or not is up to you. Some people use the 
Documents folders for all the odds and ends that don't fit anywhere 
else.

Don't hesitate to make sub-folders as needed. For example, I have an 
Applications folder within my Downloads folder for all those 
applications I download that I'm going to try out some day. Really, I 
am :-)

When I first started using Macs, back when Apple made beige 
all-in-ones, I was told that there shouldn't be more than 12 items in a 
folder, 20 max. The reason being that if you couldn't see them all at a 
glance, it was going to be faster to use another level of folders of 
logically related items. Of course screens were much smaller then and 
we didn't have thousands of files spanning 10's of gigabytes (just 
dozens of files spanning 800 kB). Whenever possible though, I still try 
to follow that guideline.

-Mike